Bioethics guide on scarce medical resource allocation in Mexico

Abstract

The bioethical inquiry about allocating fairly scarce health resources is not new, all countries around the world that were seriously afflicted by SARS-CoV-2 have issued triage guidelines in order to address the dilemmas raised by the pandemic. There is no question about the need to create bioethical guidelines, since its creation provides a degree of certainty that fair and ethical decisions are taken. This also prevents that decisions are made in solitary and maybe motivated by corrupted actions. In Mexico, the creation of this guidelines was a proactive and preventive measure to what was unavoidable, the exponential contagion phase of the pandemical scenario caused by Covid-19. On April 30, 2020 the General Sanitary Council published the Bioethical Guide to Allocate Scarce Resources on Critical Care Medicine in Emergency Situation. This guide has at the core of its principal that of upmost importance: social justice principle which main thesis is "All lives have the same value". The aim of this contribution is to provide the ethical and legal principles established in the aforementioned bioethical guideline. In sum, a brief exploration of the ethical reasons that supports a specific way to allocate scarce health resources is provided, as well as the foundations of the procedural part from a human rights-based approach.